Other Times

Villanova’s first play for 2014 is another by Ray Lawler’s from his Doll trilogy. Other Times picks-up on the characters of the Carlton boarding house a few days after the end of the Second World War. Barney and Roo are demobbed from the Army and take-up where they left-off with Nancy and Olive before they were enlisted, Bubba is now a teenager, and Emma is still the same old grouch. Nothing much has changed, and nothing much happens plot-wise except the introduction of the German-Jewish refugee Josef Hultz who Lawler uses as a device to explore briefly the antipathy to ‘migrants’ at the time.

Several of the cast were repeating their roles from Lawler’s Kid Stakes which opened Villanova’s season last year. Leanne Shellshear was a standout as Olive in 2013, and was still head-and-shoulders above everybody else in this production. She admirably caught the frivolity and pathos of a woman who refuses to change in the face of changes happening around her.

Almost matching her performance-wise was newcomer Madeleine Wright as Bubba. Showing great potential, she’s a young actor to watch. Michael McNish was again a believable Roo, as was Elizabeth Morris’s Emma. Less impressive was David Dellit’s Barney. Ken Hegarty had the nothing role of Josef Hultz but managed to invest feeling into what little there was of it.

Karen Stokes’s set design was period appropriate, as were the costumes by Pat Wockner and Mary Woodall, with Leo Wockner’s pacy direction adding to the overall performance.

Other Times works as part of the Doll trilogy but as a stand-alone play is not as successful as Kid Stakes or The Doll. Although it was dated, and at times the humour seemed forced, it was still nice to revisit Lawler’s iconic and endearing characters.

Peter Pinne       

Photographer: Charmayne Eaves.